“You must think he’s an ex-con. Why?”
“Don’t ask questions. You just pounce on this. Get me some results.”
“I might be able to pull in some favors,” Cyrus said, sniffing and wiping a hand under his runny nose. “I’ve got to make some long distance calls, though. You going to pay for them?”
“I think the police department can foot the bill, but stick to business. No bullshit sessions with your old cell mates on my dime. Work with me Cyrus, and you’ll be doing a good thing for once in your miserable life.”
Smoke funneled out of Cyrus’ nostrils. “I’ll get back to you.”
“No. I’ll get back to you. Don’t disappoint me.” He pulled some cash from his uniform pocket. “And go see a doctor.”
“Sure,” Cyrus said, grinding the butt in an ash-filled jar lid and grabbing the money. Then he plopped back onto the cushions, stretched out, and turned his back on Flynn. “I gotta rest. I’m working tonight.”
Flynn gave one last lingering look at Cyrus and pivoted toward the door. He paced by a waist-high stack of teetering cardboard boxes when moonlight glinted off metal. He glanced down and saw a key ring probably tossed on the top carton when Cyrus had stumbled into the house drunk or stoned.
The braided horsehair dangle contained several keys and a miniature bottle cap opener. It rested on a pair of black leather Flex gloves and a matching balaclava. What was Cyrus doing with a total-protection, night gear hood? Nothing legal, that was for sure. Stupid leaving such things by the front entrance, but Cyrus hadn’t expected him.
Flynn moved slow and easy onto the porch, then went down the steps. As he neared the Camino’s pick-up end, he took a quick glance behind him. Cyrus was nowhere to be seen. Flynn perused the flatbed and saw scattered tools - ten-pound sledge hammer, a shovel, pry bar, an assortment of cold chisels.
Something special caught his eye and he reached in. Bright moonlight illuminated the dark rock nestled inside his palm. He could make out a three-inch long pitted surface with one broad end and the other tapering into an arching point.
Flynn sensed someone behind him. Too late. The comforting weight of the gun against his hip disappeared as it was yanked from his holster. He spun around, remembering with self-anger that he’d unclipped the safety strap when he’d seen the rat. Cyrus stood a few feet away with the police issue .357 pistol in his left hand and a double gauge shotgun pointed at him with the other.
“Damn, Cyrus. Have you lost your mind?” Flynn asked as calmly as he could though his heart was pitching against his rib cage.
Cyrus watched him with unblinking eyes as hard and cold as yellow-green stones. Snake eyes. A moonbeam haloed his red locks as he gave Flynn an angelic smile. He pulled the shotgun trigger without saying a word.
An explosion of sound expanded to fill the world as Flynn knew it, then punched through his chest like a Jack mule’s kick. Cordite and the odor of burning meat filled his nostrils. Still his body remained standing, which surprised him immensely considering the large, ragged-edge hole in his torso. He knew he was full of buckshot, but where was the pain, Flynn wondered as he stood rooted like a statue, only one step in any direction from death’s door.
Flynn opened his mouth but no words came out. With lungs too damaged to push air past his vocal cords, his pleas for help retreated inward as he silently prayed a Catholic Psalm.
God, by Your Name save me, and by Your might defend my cause...for haughty men have risen up against me and fierce men seek my life.
When Flynn heard the small fossil in his hand drop, he fully understood his predicament. Technically speaking, he was already dead. His stubborn Irish brain just wouldn’t admit it.
Cyrus stared as gravity finally pulled Flynn’s moribund weight to the ground. He hit the dirt like a sack of potatoes, sending juices, dust, and dirt flying. His police hat flew off, rolled on its brim, and fell over with a crown-wobbling spin near the driver’s door of his Jeep.
The last thing Flynn saw before he fell into a dark abyss was Cyrus lowering the hot-barreled shotgun to his side and shivering violently against a non-existent cold.
The last thing he thought about was Ansel Phoenix.
Chapter 9
“Take only what you need and leave the land as you found it.”
Arapaho
Ansel carefully placed one boot and then the other upon the crumbly, pebble-strewn incline as she followed the jean-clad rump of Doctor Dixie LaPierre up the east face of the bluff. Behind her walked the stern-faced Agent Walthers, a non-smiling, bear of a man in his late forties whose towering stature overshadowed her every move. Outerbridge, a quartz halogen lamp in hand walked point and led them single file up the fifteen-degree switchback trail. Standback remained in camp as guard, armed with radio, handgun, and night-scope rifle.
What had started as a winding foot trail through an outwash fan near the bottom quickly turned into a wide, machine-rutted roadway. They now followed a bulldozed ledge made by shearing off bluff walls and pushing debris off the edges. Where the bulldozer bucket had cut into the cliff, colored bands of rock strata were revealed like a baker’s slice through a birthday cake. Using a loaned battery powered lantern light, Ansel noted the white sandstone layers and brown mudstone stripes, actually Paleosoil, with her geologist’s eye.
She also recognized the single darkest band of the famous K-T clay layer located halfway between the others. This was the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary deposit comprised of clay and iridium, which some experts asserted had come from an impacting meteorite ten kilometers across colliding with earth. It was possible that a devastating environmental change had occurred when the large impact crater vaporized sea water and horizontally ejected dust and grit that led to the extinction of dinosaurs.
Raking her flashlight beam over the intersecting slopes of sediment bands discarded from ancient rivers and streams covering most of Cretaceous Montana, Ansel could tell which way the water had traveled when the grains of sand and mud were deposited. Water had washed left on a bottom sandstone band, then back to the right on a middle mudstone ribbon, changing direction yet again to flow left on the topmost sandstone layer.
It was obvious that Outerbridge was taking her to a fossil dig. She should have been excited, but other factors distracted her. She’d taken off her expensive suede vest and replaced it with the man-sized, steel-plated body armor that Outerbridge had insisted she wear, and it chafed her breasts through the thin fabric of her low-cut top.
Protective apparel for a woman would have taken this into consideration, she thought with irritation. Given the heat, the heavy bullet-proof clothing, and the work-out her calves and thighs were getting, Ansel also promised herself to try exercising more.
Walthers moved up behind her. “You going to make it?”
This close, she could smell the spicy aroma of his sport cologne. “I’m fine. How much further to the mystery spot I was dragged up here to see?”
“Around this curve.”
Dixie LaPierre peered over her shoulder. “Great view from up here.”
Ansel glanced at her. It was the first time that Dixie had really talked, though she’d given her a quick smile and “Hello” before they started the climb thirty feet below.
Before she could respond, silent heat lightening flashed, and Ansel looked over the trail edge into the flat prairie expanse beneath them. A hot breeze, tainted with the scent of sagebrush, scrub, and wild grasses blew into her face. The bluff was one of many that rose above the earth’s dirty skin like a cauliflower wart made of white, micaceous sandstone. The gravid moon spilled beams across the ground in milky splotches, illuminating a pitted crossbed of calcareous, cement-like sandstone pillars resembling sharp stalagmites or giant, toadstool caps.
Above the trail a Ponderosa copse clung precariously to the highest elevations, and stars glimmered in an inky sky-pool. Miles away a coyote howled a moon-song across the Badlands. As beautiful as it was, a fall from this height into the maw of boulders and p
illars could kill her.
Silence prevailed until they reached a flat shelf on the eastern face of the precipice. The bulldozer had gouged deep into the bluff’s underbelly, pushing flora, soil, and rock away from an excavated fossil site. Once hidden beneath tons of sixty-five-million year old mud and sand, an exposed bed of gigantic dinosaur bones lay across the ground. Ansel looked upon an excavation site ringed by rechargeable, lantern-style halogens.
“Jesus,” she exclaimed, shocked and disbelieving. This was no carefully tended scientific site preserving matrix, fossils, and ecological microsites. This was a grave looting frenzy.
“Nice work, huh?” said Outerbridge, hands on his hips. “Poachers on a mission, Miss Phoenix. This used to be the near complete skeleton of an adult female T-Rex that the University of Montana had excavated for two years. Everything was carefully removed from the ground, catalogued, and jacketed in plaster this spring. Then it was re-covered with dirt so it could be removed next spring. Unfortunately, poachers got to it first.”
Ansel stepped through a litter of busted plaster jackets spewing huge broken, brown-grey bones of all sizes and descriptions. The containers resembled monstrous, hatched eggs. Fossil ribs once as tall as she were now reduced to fractured, oblong chunks. There were smashed vertebrae the size of footballs everywhere. Crushed arm bones and leg bones. Pelvic bones pulverized into dust. Everything ruined by a succession of treaded backhoe ruts and tractor treads as the plunderers hauled choice pieces away for sale at a humongous profit.
“I don’t see the skull,” Ansel said.
“That’s the only thing they wanted,” Outerbridge replied with disgust.
Temporarily speechless, Ansel turned around and bent down to pick up a smaller bone. A toe bone. It was heavy and cool to the touch. Somehow it had escaped damage, though it might have been originally preserved with an intact foot or an entire leg. There was no way to tell. The creature it belonged to had used it to run down prey, dig a nest, or to fight for its life against other dinosaurs. It was an irreplaceable treasure that had survived millennia by pure happenstance of weather conditions, geologic forces, and natural erosion.
Acid anger churned in Ansel’s stomach. She’d read about such destructive pilfering, but never seen it. This was a most grievous sacrilege of the ancient dead. Obscene and soulless.
She gently set the bone down and noticed an odd circular piece of foil about the size of an eraser head in the dust. It had a flat, green square of material attached directly in its center. It looked familiar to her, but she couldn’t place its meaning or purpose with her jumbled mind. Instinctively, she did know that it might be important. Realizing that everyone was quiet and waiting for her response, she palmed the foil tab in her left hand, stood, and turned around.
She looked at Outerbridge. “Why didn’t they take the skull and leave the rest?”
“Honey,” Dixie said softly, “Besides being thieving amateurs armed with shovels, sledgehammers, and crowbars, they’re making a point: Don’t mess with us. We don’t care about anything or anybody when it comes to getting what we want.”
Ansel glanced at the newer discarded boxes of plaster and rope which also littered the ground. “Why did they need new packing materials if the skull was already jacketed?”
“Because they placed new plaster over the old jacket,” Dixie explained. “The university marked every case with invisible paint that fluoresces under black light. Same with the bones inside. Helps identify them if they turn up in the wrong place. By covering the original jacket with new plaster, the poachers can transport the skull without it being traced. After the jacket arrives someplace safe, they’ll open it up, remove the skull, and scrub the paint off so they can sell it.”
“So the poachers knew that the university marked the jackets and bones,” Ansel considered. “Is that a standard practice these days?”
Outerbridge swatted a mosquito and moved closer. “No, it’s not. Which means these people either had access to inside information or they’re savvy enough to check for marked goods. All most legitimate universities or museums ever hope for is to get their bones back. They don’t bother to chase down the thieves and prosecute.”
“That’s no wonder,” Ansel said. “The chances of catching poachers is remote, and the idea of criminal prosecution is a joke. The Archeological Resources Protection Act never included fossils, and the 1906 Antiquities Act is completely inadequate for protecting fossils because they don’t fit the vague definition of an ‘antiquity’ under the law.”
“You know your history,” Outerbridge conceded, “and I agree. Federal legislation has failed miserably at stiffening penalties for fossil heists on public lands, but that’s because commercial fossil dealers and certain academic researchers have vehemently opposed more restrictions for fossil excavations.”
Ansel scowled. “What do you expect when the government started issuing permits only to fossil hunters doing paleontological research? Legitimate commercial dealers and other amateurs doing fossil preservation and sales to reputable institutions and collectors see this as greedy, academic snobbery. They’re being cast in the role of criminals when the real thieves are bastards like those who destroyed this site.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Outerbridge countered. “To catch these bastards.”
Ansel wasn’t buying it. “So let’s say you do catch them. Even I know that if a poaching case gets as far as a misdemeanor indictment, it won’t stand up in court under the Antiquities Act. And if thieves are ever convicted, they’ll get nothing but a modest fine or minimal prison time.”
Outerbridge sighed and looked and stared thoughtfully into the night beyond the bluff. When he turned around, his face looked older, his gaze penetrating, but weary.
“The federal government owns six-hundred and twenty-two million acres of public land held and protected in trust to every person in the United States, Miss Phoenix. We can’t allow this wholesale looting. Restricting the removal of any fossil from public land through permits is the only stop-gap federal law enforcement has got, and it’s all I’ve got to work with while I do my job. The only other thing I can fall back on is making arrests backed up with solid judicial evidence of illegal fossil poaching and sales. And I need your help.”
“Because I’m Indian? You told me you’d explain that comment. I’m still waiting.”
“I’m conducting a sting operation, and I need somebody with your experience and ethnic background to do some front surveillance work.”
Ansel was floored. She couldn’t breath as her thoughts whirled. She had to finish the last Argentine book drawing which would take another week, at least. Besides this was dangerous work. She wasn’t qualified. What would Dorbandt say? Her family? This was preposterous. She couldn’t possibly do it. She wouldn’t.
She sucked in a lung full of bone dry, hot desert air and swallowed. “No way. I’m not a token Indian for your war games against crime, Agent Outerbridge.”
Outerbridge said nothing, but Dixie walked over. “Ansel, this is no game. Forget all the rhetoric, politics, and bureaucratic bullshit Outerbridge is selling. Do you know what this poaching scum calls historic fossil sites? Bone Orchards. Like they can come in and pick them off the ground by the bushel, haul them away in pickup trucks, and sell them on the black-market by the pound. And that’s almost what they do unless somebody stops them somehow, someway.”
Dixie looked down at the carnage, crossed her arms, and shook her head. “When all the fossils are gone, they’re gone. We can’t make anymore. We need your help for a couple days.”
The silence was deafening, even in the middle of the Badlands where night birds called, predators howled, and insects sang. Outerbridge watched her closely. Walthers scratched his jaw and tried to look half as looming as he was. Dixie stared at her pitifully with large brown eyes.
Ansel felt like a heel. She could at least listen to an explanation of what they wanted of her. They seemed sincere, and they appeared quite united in their
desire to right a grievous wrong. In principal, she agreed with them one-hundred percent.
“All right. I’ll listen to what you have in mind, but I’m not promising anything. Got it?”
“Understood,” Outerbridge said. “I’ll contact you again soon. We’ll go over the operation contingencies then. Right now, let’s get you home.” He walked away. Walthers followed. Ansel remained a moment longer, inspecting the disarticulated and ruined bones a last time. The foil tab inside her balled fist felt like fire. If she got caught taking it, there’d be hell to pay.
Dixie pulled up beside her. “Relax,” she coached, a red-slashed smile showing perfect, to-die-for teeth. “You know the best part of this operation?”
Ansel shook her head.
“Honey, you get to work with Agent Standback, and he’s got the cutest tush in this pack of hair-trigger, belly-gunners.”
Chapter 10
“It is not good for anyone to be alone.”
Cheyenne
Dorbandt prayed that the Indian’s head hadn’t defrosted. He gazed at the heavily-sealed, medium sized, liner-board box covered with bio-hazard stickers on the passenger seat. Five early morning hours of speeding from Mission City to Billings with the Freon pumping hadn’t guaranteed the appropriate transport conditions.
The sedan was griddle-hot on the outside, temperatures hitting a record one-hundred-one degrees, and the interior wasn’t much cooler. Hopefully the five kilograms of dry ice surrounding the leak-proof, polystyrene box inside this one was holding up better than him. He was sweating like a steam pipe beneath his dress shirt.
“This can’t be right,” Dorbandt spat, scrabbling for the manila envelope containing the official papers needed to comply with a chain-of-custody report. He peered at Bucky Combs’ cover scrawl. Yes, this was the street.
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